New Sky TV boss talks Rugby World Cup, streaming
AUCKLAND: New Sky TV boss Martin Stewart hints that his company should never have lost the 2019 Rugby World Cup to Spark, and needs to repair relationships with NZ Rugby and other content partners as it looks to reestablish itself as ‘‘the home of sport’’.
The expat Brit has kind words for Spark’s first foray into sports streaming with the Melbourne Grand Prix.
‘‘Fair play to Spark, they’ve got a beta site up and running and it looks good in a short space of time — well done,’’ he says.
But his assessment of Sky’s own sports streaming app, Fanpass, is blunt.
‘‘The problem is that we’ve got 12 channels and our affiliate partners on Sky Sport. We put four on to Fanpass.
‘‘Then we say, ‘You can only have it on two devices.’
‘‘Then we say, ‘You can’t cast it to a big screen.’
‘‘And if all that hasn’t been enough to put you off buying it, we make it $99 [a month].’’
Mr Stewart promises a Fanpass app with more attractive pricing, the ability to stream content to big screen TV and a lot more content, soon — though four weeks into his tenure, he won’t be pinned down on an exact timeline.
And while he’s at it, the entertainmentfocused Neon app and Sky TV on Demand will get substantially more content, too, Mr Stewart says. And he wants the apps on as many platforms as possible, from Apple TV to Xbox.
He says his company has worldclass sports and entertainment content, it’s just that it’s not utilising it online.
There were suggestions that Mr Stewart’s predecessor, John Fellet, purposefully kneecapped Fanpass, and other apps and online services in the Sky stable, for fear of cannibalising Sky’s shrinking but highermargin traditional satellite business.
‘‘I’m looking at the balance of investment and this time I want to see us do a lot more on the streaming side of the business,’’ Mr Stewart says.
Sky subscriber numbers rose year after year to a peak in 2015 before falling away as new online competition proliferated.
’’We have to put more effort into that streaming side and how we utilise what we’ve got. So I’m focussed on that for now and we’ll let the other side rumble on for now. New generation decoder boxes take a long time.
‘‘I want the team focussed on how we do much more, much more quickly on the streaming side.’’
There have been two highprofile departures during Mr Stewart’s first month in charge: director of sport Richard Last, whose abrupt exit was leaked to the Herald, and CFO Jason Hollingworth, who headed to a job at Vector.
Did Mr Last walk the plank for losing the Rugby World Cup?
‘‘We have to adapt and evolve for the next period of time. A lot of the team have been with the company a long time, and some times you need a bit of a change of direction, a bit of a refresh,’’ Mr Stewart replies, talking around the question.
The Herald tries another tack: would Mr Stewart have preferred Sky to have kept the World Cup?
‘‘I would, yes. I would. It’s the World Cup of Rugby Union and the home of the All Blacks,’’ he says.
‘‘I can’t secondguess history — but I’m determined that Sky Sport will be seen as the home of sport. And that means retaining and building on the key rights that we have — not letting them go.’’
Sky TV’s problems have been wellcatalogued, from Netflix’s challenge for its entertainment audience to Spark’s sports insurgency to the search for a ‘‘Plan B’’ after the ComCom nixed its merger with Vodafone NZ, the rise of livesports piracy, declining subs, falling average revenue per user and a sagging share price.
Mr Stewart seems set to grasp the nettle with streaming (although he’s wary of details at this early stage, and cautions contacts will have to favourable for apps to spread to more platforms.
But otherwise, things are still at the assessment stage.
In 2015, Sky TV shares touched $7. But its stock has since sagged over the Netflix threat, the failure of its Vodafone NZ merge, the Spark Sport insurgency, falling subs and disappearing dividends.
The previous Sky TV regime promised an Androidpowered ‘‘puck’’ that would receive all of its channel and ondemand content via broadband — and said it would be with us during February just gone.
A decoder upgrade was also promised for satellite customers, and an allapp, allondemand service by the end of the year for the online crowd.
Mr Stewart is holding off a revised timeline and product timeline until he’s got the lay of the land.
He says it will be completed soon.
The new focus on streaming implies a leaner organisation.
After all, streaming is a meaner, lowermargin business than linear TV. Mr Stewart won’t be drawn on any possible changes to headcount, but for the short term at least, he indicates there won’t be anything as wrenching as the process under way at marketing partner Vodafone NZ, where another new CEO, Jason Paris, is making his mark. — NZME